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Program Challenges During the First Year of Serving Families
We identified a number of challenges that the 17 research programs faced in their first year of serving families. Some reflect the programs' early stage of implementation, others reflect the difficulties associated with transitioning to a new program model. In addition, the programs were struggling to adjust to new realities and family needs following welfare reform. These challenges included:
- Reaching and maintaining full enrollment
by the deadline.
Although enrollment was proceeding, for some programs, the research
eligibility criteria made it harder to recruit families, and the need
to recruit twice as many families (to allow for control group assignment)
made it harder to meet the deadline for full enrollment. Beyond the
initial difficulties in recruitment, some of the programs had lost and
replaced more than 20 families by the time of the site visits.
- Making a transition to child-focused services.
Some Early Head Start programs had a history of providing family
support services, and some had proposed service plans that were family-focused.
For these programs, responding to the Head Start Bureau's directive
that all Early Head Start programs must place priority on enhancing
child development during home visits and on helping families arrange
high-quality child care required the staff in these programs to think
and work in new ways, which some staff members resisted.
- Ensuring high-quality child care for families who
used child care in community settings. Families' needs for
child care were increasing under welfare reform. In most communities,
the supply of high-quality child care for infants and toddlers was
insufficient, which made it difficult for staff and families to
arrange high-quality child care unless the program provided it directly.
At the time of our site visits, some of the home-based and mixed-approach
programs had begun assessing, monitoring, and/or promoting the quality
of child care provided to Early Head Start children in community
settings, but many were still trying to identify ways of doing so
as ACYF clarified its expectation that programs are responsible
for ensuring the quality of childcare received by Early Head Start
children.
- Engaging parents and children in group socialization
activities and getting parents to attend meetings. Finding
times when parents were available to attend group socialization activities
was challenging for many programs offering home-based services. Few
programs had yet succeeded in engaging families in group socializations
to the intended extent. Many parents faced other demands on their time,
and attending group socialization activities was often not their highest
priority. Many programs, especially those implementing the home-based
option, also found it difficult to achieve good levels of attendance
at Parent Committee and Policy Council meetings and to develop volunteer
opportunities for parents.
- Meeting the required schedule of weekly home
visits for families receiving home-based services. Welfare reform
now requires many low-income parents to work or participate in work-related
activities, so many parents gave priority to looking for jobs and working
rather than participating in program activities. Beyond the demands
of welfare reform, the chaotic, disorganized lives of some families
made it difficult for them to keep appointments for home visits. Home
visitors often tried to reschedule missed visits but could not always
do so.
- Adding Early Head Start to Head Start services.
Staff accustomed to serving families with older children needed to shift
their focus to the special needs of families with infants and toddlers.
Moving from Head Start to Early Head Start also required adjustments
to the length of the work year, work schedules, and work activities
that were difficult for some staff. Adding Early Head
Start to Head Start was not always difficult, but when there were staffing
or administrative problems within the Head Start program, and Early
Head Start was perceived as competing for resources, tensions sometimes
arose among staff members.
- Paying home visitors and center
teachers satisfactory wages. On average, the Early Head Start
programs paid these staff members $9.77 an hour, which amounts to an
annual salary of about $20,000. Staff members, although largely satisfied
with their jobs, felt that their wages were inadequate. At least one
program reported having difficulty filling open positions, because of
the salaries they were offering.
- Changing leadership and staff turnover. Most of the research programs did not experience high rates of staff turnover, but four programs reported that at least one-third of their staff members had left and been replaced in the year prior to the fall 1997 site visit. In some of the programs that experienced high rates of turnover in frontline workers, some families experienced disruptions in services. It was not always possible to replace staff members immediately, and the remaining staff members could not step in and do all the work of the ones who had left. Improving staff morale and re-engaging families were important challenges for programs and their new staff members in the four sites where staff turnover was high.
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